


End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story

by sis_of_the_moon



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alexander Calder, Alternate Universe, And I turn the six upside down it's a nine now, Angry Harry, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brampton, Can you feel all these period-appropriate music references?, Casa del Popolo, David Altmejd, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Flashbacks, Freeform, Lot of art talk, Love Jones, M/M, Montreal, POV Zayn, Paris (City), Randy's Patties, Recreational Drug Use, Shakespeare and Company, The Québec Triennial 2008, Toronto, Yes I Named Harry's Band After A Larry Fic, You Have Been Warned, before Sunset - Freeform, harry is a baker, zayn is a writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 12:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13681578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sis_of_the_moon/pseuds/sis_of_the_moon
Summary: Zarry Before Sunset AU. Zayn was just a boy from Brampton when he saw Harry's band play Montreal's Casa del Popolo in 2008. Ten years later, they reunite in Paris.





	End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story

**Author's Note:**

> teaaep, I had so much fun writing this for you. Your writing prompts were all amazing, but you definitely had me at "à la Before Sunset". Hope you enjoy the angst and feels.
> 
> Special thanks to Sammie for being such a boss beta reader. Your feedback was invaluable. This is dedicated to all the amazing 1D For Olds Slack ladies. And props to Richard Linklater and Theodore Witcher for writing such beautiful cinematic works (Before Sunset and Love Jones, respectively), which inspired the film script formatting and a couple scenes, literally, word for word. I am so not original. 
> 
> If you're curious, full credits for the artworks mentioned are as follows: Alexander Calder, "Red Little Pads", 1956, Guggenheim Museum, NY; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Golden), 1995, Guggenheim Museum, NY; David Altmejd, "Le Berger", 2008, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.
> 
> Title is from a Dears song I'd like to imagine Zayn had on an iPod playlist circa 2008 entitled "Walking Alone in Montreal at Night".

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Toronto, 2011.”**

Zayn is a writer, and, as such for his vocation, takes a narrative approach. He was born on January 12, 1985, at Peel Memorial in Brampton, a suburban city just outside of Toronto. Son of Yaser and Trish, he grew up on Etobicoke Creek with three sisters, a dial-up internet connection, and a coterie of pets. 

When he first met his ex-wife, Gigi, she demanded to know his sign. They were in bed, smoking a joint, back when she lived in the bachelor near Dundas West station. _Take Care_ and _House of Balloons_ played back-to-back on loop, and he was still mystified by the constellation of moles along her body, which was a way in which he mapped her curves and contours. It’s been a couple years since he’d last slept with a woman, and he was trying to locate his way back to being straight. But Gigi was so smart — like lawyer-smart, and drop-dead gorgeous and funny. Thank god they’re still friends.

“Capricorn,” he slyly drew out, shyly tucking his head underneath the pillow. He has a fuzzy memory on a lot of things, but he distinctly knows that he told her everything that night, and she the same. Everything may have eventually turned to shit between them, but at the very least, they had this. 

“You’re a Capricorn!” Gigi coughed out after taking a hit of the joint Zayn had passed to her. “Such an old soul. You live your life in reverse. You’ll get lighter as you get older.”

He rolls over to her side of the bed, taking the joint away from her hand and squashing in the ashtray. 

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Paris, 2018.”**

It’s a warm Spring afternoon, and Zayn’s sitting with a coffee and cigarette at a sidewalk café not too far from St Michel station. Paris is the last stop on his European book tour, and he can’t wait to stop dodging the questions he gets during signings. This is what happens when you write about a long-haired indie rock boy. He’ll be back in Toronto soon enough, snuggling with Stitch, binge-watching _Narcos_. The buzz of his mobile on the café table interrupts.

**bruh**

Reads the first text. He picks up his phone, slides it open onto Facebook. His best friend Liam just sent a Facebook memory of them ten years ago, looking sweaty and utterly shitfaced at that hip hop show at Wrongbar. He remembers only sharing a bottle of vodka with Isis from Thunderheist, and ending up at a basement party on Airport Road. The texts keep coming:

**we ate that entire box of randy’s patties**

**smoked shisha**

**met those markham tings**

**DUN KNO**

Zayn smirks at Liam’s casual slip into his Scarborough tongue. Their memories are slightly different: sure, Liam was definitely with the Markham girls, but Zayn distinctly remembers slinking off to the toilet because he wanted to suck that Newmarket punk kid off. His knees were bruised for two weeks after. He immediately taps off a bunch of rocket emojis, which they both know is Zayn’s way of gracefully exiting from the throwback. 

_Narcos_ , roti, weed, snuggling with his dog and cats. He just needs to get through this reading, and he'll be home soon enough. 

 

**INT. SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY — AFTERNOON**

“Do you consider the book autobiographical?” 

Zayn’s blinks, preparing for what has likely been the tenth time this has been the first question to kick off the Q and A portion. His reactions throughout the tour have varied, from feeling like it was utterly absurd, to then taking it as an opportunity to workshop “zoems”, a participatory performance involving a passed mic and everyone “checking in” with their stream-of-consciousness. _The Believer_ profiled one of the last sessions Zayn did in Amsterdam, and he was now starting to get invitations from universities and colleges. It was a way in which Zayn could avoid constantly repeating the same sound bytes.

But this last stop in Paris isn’t so bad, since it’s Shakespeare and Company, one of the most famous independent bookstores in the world. The first time he visited, it was on a short layover between Islamabad and London with his mum. She was still a flight attendant for Canadian Airlines then, and sometimes brought Zayn along on her flights. He’d dress in an immaculate suit and tie, and feel worldly purchasing a pack of gum and a copy of _NME_ from Duty Free. 

When they walked into the store, Zayn felt a calm settle over him. He was enchanted with the chapbooks near the cashier, and envied the cool university students on their gap year who got to spend a night in the lofts — he was stuck with his mum in a shared hotel room. Years later, here he is, just a boy from Brampton, somehow making it. 

“Isn’t everything biographical?” he responds back rhetorically. “I’m a writer, so the way I process life is capturing all these moments and trying to make sense of it. Everything’s copy to me.” 

 

**INT./EXT. — MONTAGE**

The sleeves. Those long, woolly sleeves would graze table tops and denim knees and naked skin. If he were to dip into the bio-physical memory of that night in Montreal ten years ago, he remembers the textures and glances and free-falling encounters. The taste of freshly baked Saint Viateur bagels at 4AM, seeing on the sidewalks near McGill the one forlorn half a pair of Aldo ballet flats, watching the sunrise with a beautiful boy near the lake in Parc La Fontaine. 

It’s odd, what happens when you write and rewrite your memories into fictitious constraints. All the dialogue has been transposed, dissipating each time it’s read or referenced in readings and interviews. All the words, out of necessity, became absorbed into indie rock boy, Harry’s literary alter-ego. Zayn’s brain only has the bandwidth now for the Instagram feed: green eyes, slightly crooked teeth, tendrils of hair falling out of that hippie head scarf, that dumb butterfly torso tattoo. 

He blinks. Mirrored stairways, the pinging of pinball and the speeding rush of racing car games; the experiences are still there, but the words are now missing. They only exist on the page.

 

**INT. SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY**

“I haven’t been shot, but I’ve been racially profiled at the airport. It’s important to tell our stories: the political, but the personal too. What does it mean to connect with someone? I thought if I could write a book that capture that, and resonate — well, this book was an attempt.”

“So was the boy you met at a concert in Montreal real?”

In a flash, he’s transported back to saying goodbye to Harry, in front of the duplex him and Niall shared. His roadie had just pulled up to the curb; the band had a five hour drive to Cambridge for a show. Zayn could see Louis in the backseat, looking at the both of them quizzically, trying to decipher their body language. They decided, given the band’s _Rumours_ -like situation, to not exchange contact information. They only made one promise: to meet again, in a year’s time, at the Guggenheim. Harry confided that it was his favourite museum because of the red Alexander Calder mobile in its lobby. 

Boy, Zayn is so tired of winding his way out of these interviews. Why do journalists always seem to know where the dead bodies are? “This is the last stop of my tour. If you want it to be true, it’s true.”

Another reporter waves their hand up, and the publicist flags them to speak. It’s a packed house and even though the windows are open, Zayn feels hot under his collar. He nods to Stephane, signalling that he wants the next question to be the final. “Do you think they get back together the next year in New York like they promised?”

Zayn studies the recorder thrust into his face, and quickly looks down at his mandala tattoo to ground his nerve-wracking energy. He attempts nonchalance. “To answer would take the piss out of it.” 

“OK!” barks the publicist. “We have time for one last question.” She points to the female reporter in the front row.

“Why do we never find out the real name of the Montreal boy?” asks the reporter, a notebook clutched in her hands. Zayn thinks this is the _Paris Match_ journalist Stephane said was on the media list. “Everyone else has a name: Veronica, Marcel, Harvey, and Jonny.”

Zayn rolls his eye, dying for a cigarette. He looks back in the audience, only to be caught by a face in the back. Floral-print shirt, green eyes, smoldering gaze. Holy fucking shit. It’s him. It’s Harry. He’s here, in Paris, listening to Zayn talk about the book. In a split second glance, he catalogues every part of Harry’s appearance. His hair is neatly cropped short — no longer a tangled mess swept passed his shoulders — and flipped away from his face. It makes him look less boyish, more angular, like an Old Hollywood pin-up rather than Rolling Stone cover. The shirt is unbuttoned all the way down to his navel, revealing a smattering of tattoos. He’d been pretty as a boy, and unsurprisingly, matured into a fine man. Every nerve in Zayn’s body tensed, and he clutched at the table to prevent his hands from shaking, to steel himself from the silent voice yelling at him to forget this audience, forget this book. He doesn’t know if he wants to fight for this man standing just five feet away, looking openly at Zayn, drinking him in as well, or run away. 

“It’s a meditation on privileged white male masculinity,” Zayn blurts, befuddled by the very subject standing in front of him with a smirk. “And an attempt to un-learn why it constantly deserves centre stage. He’s like the manic pixie dream girl in _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotlight Mind_. A figment of blown up anxieties —”

“And I think it’s time to shift this towards the book signings now! Our author needs to be going to the airport very soon.” The publicist thanks Zayn for his time. There is polite applause, and then everyone disperses. Zayn looks back at Harry, who nods his head in recognition. He signals for Harry to wait for him, and then gets the publicist’s attention.

“How long until I have to leave for the airport?”

“You should leave about 7:15PM or so, 7:30 at the latest.”

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Montreal, 2008.”**

It was September, and Zayn was starting his first year of graduate studies at Concordia. He was feeling pretty good at the time, living with Niall in that duplex near Parc and Villeneuve. After commuting for four years between Brampton and York University for his Bachelors, he was excited to leave behind Toronto, and finally commit to being a writer. His first poem was going to be published in the next issue of _BRICK_ , and his new friend Griff had asked him to take part in a reading at Drawn and Quarterly. He was finally realizing that he maybe had what it takes to be a writer. 

So he was taking chances now, instead of smoking too much weed in his room alone, playing _World of Warcraft_ with Liam. It’s been a couple weeks now, and he had finally accepted his new roommate’s invite to Casa del Popolo, a hipster cafe on St Laurent. Niall, an Irishman from Mullingar, was super chill and liked getting high and listening to Bon Iver. That’s how they ended up breaking the ice: playing their iPod playlists for each other. If Zayn were to distill the soundtrack then, it was 808 beats and a telecaster guitar — such a remove from listening to Liam’s iPod full of Drake, Lil’ Wayne and T.I. 

Niall was writing music reviews for the _Montreal Mirror_ , and often scored tickets to concerts by local and out of town bands. Which is why Zayn found himself one Friday evening at the Casa del Popolo. The ceiling disco ball was spinning, and everyone in the room was bathed in kaleidoscopic cutaways of shadow and light. He was there as Niall’s plus one for the Montreal debut of a new band called These Inconvenient Fireworks. 

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “PARIS, 2018.”**

“I can’t believe you’re here!” bursts Zayn, shaking Harry’s shoulders still in disbelief. 

“I live in Paris,” explains Harry. “Don’t you have to stay?”

“Naw, it’s OK. They’re sick of me.” He spent the night there last night in the loft. Zayn quickly steers Harry towards the doors, all the way signing a couple more books and exchanging air kisses with the French translator he hung out with the night before. It’s strange, the way Harry easily falls against him, letting Zayn lead the way, take control. He leans in, his hand quickly brushing against his fingers as they squeeze through the book signing crowd. It’s a quiet yet resolute gesture of support, a subtle way in which Harry is able to ground him in this very moment. It’s an unexpected reversal of roles; here, Zayn’s centre stage, and Harry’s gentle reassurance runs contrary to the boy that seemed to always live in the spotlight. The second they break past the crowd and walk outside, Zayn feels Harry’s hand dart back. 

“It’s good to see you,” he says, quickly schooling his expression to not transmit any reaction to that sudden loss. His stomach is full of knots. He’s envisioned this moment how many times, and it’s finally happening, and he feels like he’s already removing himself from the situation, constructing a narrative. 

“It’s good to see you too,” Harry says slowly, sensing that Zayn’s a possible fight or flight risk. “I know a good cafe around here. Up for that?” The deep, calming tenor of his voice makes Zayn feels like the book signing is already a world away. 

“Yeah, let’s.”

As they make their way along rue Saint Julien le Pauvre, Harry gets Zayn up to speed on how he ended up at Shakespeare & Co. He’s a regular, and saw Zayn’s name on the in-store calendar advertising his book signing. “But it wasn’t until I saw the book being reviewed in _Libération_ and saw your photo that I put two and two together. Did anyone tell you that you look like an International Studies major going to brunch?”

Zayn looks down at his outfit — he had put on dark round sunglasses, a carry-on backpack, and paired his light denim jacket with the Peruvian knit hoodie he got at that street market in Lima. His hair was cut at the beginning of the tour, hence the stubble coming in on the brushed undercut sides. He smirks at Harry’s attempt at fashion commentary. 

“Did you read it?” 

“Of course,” answered Harry, who seems to point out Zayn’s outfit as an excuse to openly check him out. “Twice.” 

“ _Comme ci, comme ça?_ ” 

“You know, I usually read cookbooks and trashy tell-all rock bios, but I liked it,” offered Harry. “It’s romantic and well-written. Congrats.”

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Montreal, 2008.”**

“Just so you know,” drawled a deep voice into the microphone. “Our music is known to break cell phones.” 

The lead singer had a baby face and shaggy hair ensnared in a green head scarf. He coyly made eye contact with the audience, before quickly pulling the mic from its stand and kicking it down. It was so Mick Jagger. 

Niall squeezed Zayn’s arm, a live wire buzzing off the jangling rhythm guitar, and the snare being in pocket. “Isn’t this good?” 

“It’s alright. Stupid tattoos though on the whole lot of ‘em.” 

Niall laughed, and then quickly got Zayn up to speed on the folksy duo. Harry was clearly the frontman, but shared the mic with Louis, whom Niall thought was the more emotive punk singer out of the two. They had built a passionate West Coast following for harmony-drenched folk rock, and their EP just scored a 8.2 on Pitchfork.

They smoothly moved from a 1950s slow dance with angelic five-part harmonies, to then two rockers back to back that rattled with ramshackle spark. The back and forth vocals between Harry and Louis was intimate, hot. They would alternate being jokingly pogo-ing on the stage, to leaning into each other, Harry vamping it up as Louis chugged stabbing guitar lines that electrified the amp. A synthesizer thrummed, and its humming bass made Zayn's balls tighten. 

This was probably the most tenderly rocking show he’d been to. He felt like a floating top note, swooping high above. At one point, as Niall and Zayn were good naturally singing along to the call and response chorus, he could have sworn Harry was looking at him from the stage. The locked in a gaze, and Harry suggestively strolled over to stage left, near where Niall and Zayn were standing. He stuck his tongue, and bumped his crotch into the air. Zayn licked his lips, admiring the tight black jeans and gold heeled boots and the way the head scarf got undone as he head banged along to their crack backing band.

“He’s bloody good, isn’t he?”

“Whatever, Nialler.”

 

**EXT. WALK FROM BOOKSTORE — AFTERNOON**

They amble along the Latin Quarter cobblestone, walking southwest on rue Saint Julien le Pauvre. Students lounge on park grass behind black painted iron fence, and they pass by a green-painted house next to Dubois and the St Severin bookshops that probably counted Sartre and de Beauvoir as customers. The conversation is easy, but tentative. Harry catches Zayn briefly up on his life so far: after leaving the band, he backpacked around Europe and Southeast Asia (“It’s tough being a tourist when you’re on tour”) before settling in Paris and taking baking classes at Le Cordon Bleu. He still picks up the odd session gig here and there, but is generally content with getting up every morning at 4AM to bake bread.

“Before we go any further,” Harry asks. “Did you show up in New York a year later? I have to know.”

That was the promise they made in Montreal all those years ago: to meet in the Guggenheim’s rotunda the following September, underneath Calder’s “Red Lily Pads”. It seems so quaint and romantic now. 

“Did you?”

Harry purses his lips, and nervously sweeps his hand through his short hair. “I couldn’t. But did you? I have to know, it’s important to me.”

Zayn raises his eyebrow, and tries acting playful. “Why, especially after you didn’t?”

“Come on, I need to know. Did you?”

Zayn holds Harry’s gaze for a beat, and then looks away. “No, I didn’t.”

Harry lets out a dramatic breath. “Oh, wow, thank god you didn’t.”

“Right? Thank god you didn’t either. It would have been really awkward.” 

They continue walking, eventually turning onto rue Galande, and pause for a moment in front of Studio Galande to take in the film posters. 

“I was so concerned about that. I’ve always felt horrible about not being there, but I couldn’t,” confesses Harry. “Louis and I — weren’t exactly over by then. We got booked to open for Vampire Weekend’s west coast tour that fall.”

“Your bandmate, right? The one who you slept with, even though he had the girlfriend back at home?”

“How do you remember that?” 

Zayn shrugs. “I remember everything that night.”

Harry nonchalantly tosses his hands in the air in silent defeat. “Of course you remember, it’s in the book. We were in LA, and I thought about catching an overnight flight to meet you. But Louis — well, he was a bit of a mess then. I think that was when he overdosed. I had to take him to the hospital, get his stomach pumped. I had to stay with him after that, even though it was the beginning of the end.”

“I am so sorry to hear that.”

Harry dismisses the apology with a wave. “Doesn’t matter now, especially since you weren’t there.” They continue to walk silently, ruminating in the shared realization. Zayn feels Harry’s gait slow down. “Wait, why weren’t you there? I would have been there if it weren’t for my drug addict ex. You better have a good reason.”

They stop and look at each other. Harry’s eyebrows knit together, and there’s a deep line in his forehead as he studies Zayn’s face. Zayn attempts a studied calm, but the jig is clearly up. 

“Oh man, you were there, weren’t you?”

 

**INT./EXT. — MONTAGE**

Sweaty palms. Looking up at Alexander Calder's “Red Lily Pads”, squinting slightly because of the bright afternoon light streaming through the ceiling domed window. It was a balmy Saturday afternoon, and Zayn arrived half an hour early because he was paranoid about being late. He sat in the lobby, his breath hitching every time a new wave of tour groups and the like entered, expecting to spot Harry’s long hair and wiry grin. He sat there for two hours before he accepted that Harry wasn’t going to come. 

After dipping in and out of galleries as he walked upwards along the spiral floors, he wandered into an exhibition of works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, an openly-gay Cuban artist who lived during the AIDS crisis. At one point, Zayn found himself standing at an entryway bordered with glittering gold beaded curtains. The gleaming surface entranced him, and as Zayn slowly brushed past the beaded strings — feeling the weight of the beads against his skin and hair, a poor substitute for what he was hoping to encounter — he realized a chapter in his life had closed.

 

**EXT. WALK FROM BOOKSTORE — AFTERNOON**

“Have you hated me all this time?”

Harry’s plaintive implore sharpens into focus both the past and present. Was Zayn bitter? Maybe, but as he passed through those gold beaded curtains, wrestling with thoughts of the artist’s morality and well as his own, he remembers the writer in him processing it all as copy. Suddenly, his great romance now had an ending.

“I don’t hate you. Sure, I was bummed about it, but I wasn’t surprised.” Zayn swallows back the admission that he had kept up with Harry’s band through Pitchfork, and secretly relished the 4.3 review they got a couple years later, just before they broke up. “I was disappointed that we didn’t exchange contacts. I wanted to look you up online, but it didn’t feel right.”

“We were such idiots. I so wanted to email you and say why I wasn’t there. But I had nothing — it was only until I saw your book that you literally came back into my life.”

Zayn rubs Harry’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. “Let’s not dwell on the past, yeah? What’s done is done.”

 

**INT. CAFE - AFTERNOON**

They settle at Le Pure Café, a classic Parisian café on rue Jean-Macé. Over coffee, Harry muses about how Zayn idealized himself in his book, whereas made Harry come off as this mixture of being aloof but also needy — a people pleaser. Rather than be offended, Harry just chalks it to Zayn fixating on this past version of himself. “I got over what people thought of me when I hit 30,” he explained. A lot changed for him when he became a full-time baker. Once a week, Harry gives free baking classes to kids through a food bank. He works a lot with racialized newcomers, and this food advocacy work had him confronting a lot of his own prejudices.

“I listen more,” he answers when Zayn asks how its changed him. He talks about how baking is a life skill, and how empowering it is to see the kids figure their way through a recipe, kneading the dough, easing into a kitchen's easy atmosphere. “They open up, talk about their home life, and their day at school. They deal with so much shit — it makes me want to do more. The world is such a mess right now, and I can’t just step back and watch everything go to shit, you know?” 

Zayn is impressed by learning that this is how Harry’s life has gone. He never knew this side, and he’s contending this version he had of an older Harry when he was younger — debauched rock star touring non-stop, not a care in the world — with this more nuanced version whose career may have ended, but seem to come out of the other side with his sanity intact. Zayn is surprised that he’s so invested in the world, but… also a cynic.

“I really admire what you’re doing,” says Zayn. “You’re not detached from life.”

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Montreal, 2008.”**

“This looks sort of like a prehistoric space disco creature I once saw during an acid trip some years ago,” muses Harry. 

After the show, and how many rounds at the bar, and Niall convincing Louis that he needed to catch the last set, and Harry chatting Zayn up the whole time, and complaining about never seeing enough art when he tours, and saying that while Louis was next to him, pointedly ignoring him for some reason — the pair find themselves at a late night party at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Known as the MAC to locals, Zayn thought Harry be down for checking out the Quebec Triennial. Everyone had been talking about all the artists in the show. 

Which is why, standing twelve feet tall in front of them, is an oversized, Star Wars-esque wookie by this artist named David Altmejd. The snowy-white fur has the luster and length of horse hair, and the body has gaping holes for the tiny mirrored stairways that wind through where the kneecap and heart would usually be. It reminds Zayn of Cloud City, and he half-expects the Millennium Falcon to swoop by. 

Zayn walks over, and scans through the artwork’s didactic text. “Blah blah blah, represented Canada at the Venice Biennale last year, blah blah blah — oh! This is interesting. He was inspired by the video game _Shadow of the Colossus_. That’s kind of cool.” He looks over to Harry, whose head is tilted upward, mouth slightly gaping. Harry’s zen-like focus on the artwork impresses him, and he wants to bite that bottom lip and squeeze his tight ass and — 

“Tell me about the acid trip.”

“Phish at the Gorge. Louis and I drove down from Vancouver for both shows. They had just kicked into “You Enjoy Myself’, this funky absurd jam that’s a regular in their setlists. Have you ever been to the Gorge?” Zayn shakes his head. “It’s this small town in Washington that has this amazing amphitheatre just above the Columbia River. About a five hour drive from Vancouver. I’d die to play there.” There is such resolute sureness in the statement, like it’s a matter of fact that in five years, Harry will be running up and down a stadium’s catwalk, singing his heart out to a sea of people, holding them all under his charismatic sway. Zayn’s equally envious and in awe, especially since he himself is taken by Harry’s rambling, sometimes nonsensical charm. 

“Anyways, the sun was setting behind the canyon, and all the purple, pink and red hues of the sky just morphed into this creature. That’s probably when it kicked in. Louis always tells me I was probably just distracted by someone’s fun fur costume, but it was super profound. I felt so connected with the kindness of everyone there.”

Zayn rolls his eyes. Just what he needs: a Phish Head. “Kind of wish I checked out your Myspace page before hanging out with you.”

 

**INT. CAFE - AFTERNOON**

“Do I look different?”

Zayn sizes Harry up across the table. 

“Your hair is shorter.”

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Montreal, 2008.”**

Pumping bass, a droning melody about flying high and visas in a name. They're on the dance floor, and everyone's faces just melted after the DJ threw on M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". Zayn can’t help himself; when the mixtape gun bullets reverberate the sound system, he waves in the air fake O.G. hand signs, imagining he’s in a music video with Snoop Dogg and Pharrell.

Harry, of course, is embarrassing. He keeps waving his big head of hair around, banging when he should be head nodding. Neon light bars are hanging above, multi-colour pulsating points between the twist of a hip or a knock of a shoulder. Zayn admires how open he is, how unafraid he is to look like an idiot, even amidst all these dancing strangers. 

“What you want, Zayn? Tell me what you need,” he cajoles, grinding against Zayn as they bounce to the booming bass.

 

**EXT - WATER SHORE - AFTERNOON**

After coffee, they catch a boat ride along the Seine, watching clouds darken and form. When the boat reaches Quai Henri IV on the Right Bank, Harry and Zayn get off. The pair slowly amble along the beach, delaying as much as possible the inevitable: reaching the black car parked just ahead, ready to take Zayn to the airport. 

“I guess this is goodbye?” Harry offers lamely, putting on a brave face, as he watches the driver approach. “Let me give you my —”

Zayn cuts him off. “No, no, no, no, let me give you a ride home.” 

“Honestly, don’t bother. I can take the metro.”

“It’s not a problem, really. My flight isn’t leaving until — like 10? I have to be at the airport two and half hours early. The least we could do is drop you off.” Zayn turns to the driver now standing in front of them. “ _Monsieur_? Could we give my friend a ride?” 

Harry cuts in. “ _C’est pas tres loin, c’est 10 rue des petites ecuries._ ”

“ _De rein_ ,” answers the driver as he opens the door for the both to get in. “ _Allons-y_!”

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Montreal, 2008.”**

The bars are closed, and between the both of them, they don’t have enough cover to get into an afterhours like Circus or Stereo. Zayn texted Niall for recommendations, and he suggested Amusement 2000 Plus. “It’s open until 4:30 on Fridays” he wrote back. “Get it!!!”

Zayn ignored the multiple exclamation marks, and him and Harry end up at the arcade, playing pinball. Harry has somehow taken it upon himself to explain the basics of flipping. He stands behind Zayn, attempting to show him how he can catch the ball with a flipper. “Catching the ball lets you both stop and think of what shot you want to try to take next,” he explains. 

Zayn looks behind at him. “Are you going to now teach me how to aim?”

“Nuh-uh, we’re turning the tables here. It’s 4AM already — ” Harry pushes Zayn against the machine, holding him firm between the flippers and hard edge. “Is it safe to assume that we’re going to kiss?”

“Maybe,” tosses off Zayn.

“Maybe?”

“Probably.”

 

**INT. CAR — AFTERNOON**

The speeding reflections of greenery and stone apartment exteriors cast upon Harry’s face, which is deeply screwed in contemplation, trying to emphatically explain why keeping up a non-boyfriend — his own words, not Zayn’s — works for him. “I mean, Mitch is great. He’s fun. We hang when he’s in town, but that’s it.” 

Harry lowers the car window, and the blustery wind whips his hair across his face, making him look like a Mick Rock portrait of a rock star in transit. 

“I don’t need to romanticize things so much anymore. I suffered too much for it,” Harry reasons. “This? It works.”

“Is that why you’re in a relationship with a man that’s never around?” Zayn bites his lip, realizing his observation might have cut more than intended. But, fuck it. He wants to call Harry’s bluff.

Harry laughs sardonically. “Relationships suffocate me. I don’t need to feel like he’s taking a little bit of my heart each time he goes.”

 

**SUPERIMPOSE: “Montreal, 2008.”**

They’re lying in the grass at opposite ends underneath a tree, not too far from the storied illuminated fountain of Parc La Fontaine, buzzing on the MDMA they snorted in the toilets at MAC. Their shirts are off, and their faces are close to each other, nuzzling into shared confidences. Zayn riddles off questions in rapid succession. What scared you as a kid? Untied shoes. Top or bottom? Bottom. What was the first song you learnt to sing? 

“Bryan Adams’s ‘Summer of ’69’!” Sayd Harry. “My turn. First kiss?”

“Eight or nine. I remember the girl being taller than me, and we were outside somewhere so I had to stand on top of a brick to be level with her,” admitted Zayn. “That’s the major thing I remember about my first kiss.” 

Harry laughs at Zayn’s literal shortcomings, and impulsively rests his head on Zayn’s bare chest. His hands deftly touches Zayn’s forehead, and Zayn’s left arm snakes over Harry’s shoulder to ruffle his hair. Intertwined, Harry leans over, and laughs into Zayn’s ear at his follies. It’s playful, and buoyed from Harry’s boyish good looks and charming ways. 

“What is it now?” Zayn asks, no longer attempting to try so hard at being cool.

Harry’s staring upwards at the night sky, a beatific look on his face as he stargazes. Zayn can feel in his bones his carefree nature, the distance from Louis releasing the tension that might have been there when they first met at the bar, and the burning of this raw, yearning passion between them. “You just lean on me and give me a hard on,” confesses Harry laconically into his hair. His right arm brushes against Zayn’s left shoulder, his fingers drifting along his neck and clavicle. If it weren’t such a hot September night, he’d shiver. 

Zayn leans into Harry, feeling his lips touch his forehead, nose, cheek. Harry greedily kisses his neck, and his right arm stretches back to slip into Zayn’s underwear, lazily massaging his penis, teasing at the way it’s heavy weight leaps in response to Harry’s methodical touch. Zayn’s right arm wraps over Harry’s torso, an attempt to ground himself, rubbing it back and forth along Harry’s back as Harry sucks at his Adam’s apple. All that can be heard is their hot breathes, and the tingling between their aching bodies. Harry’s thumb rubs against the head of Zayn’s penis, still continuing to nuzzle his neck and ruffle his hair. It’s tantalizing and every ember of Zayn’s body is on fire. 

“We’re close right now, aren’t we?” observes Zayn as his right hand grazes against Harry’s temple, soothing away any lingering tensions. Despite it all, he still feels shy and reserved, waiting for Harry to take the next step.

“It ain’t over,” pronounces Harry, who pulls Zayn into a kiss. Their tongues snake against one another, lazily feeling teeth edges and messy lips and the cool air and desperately grabbing at this ephemeral moment that could be gone just like that if they aren’t careful. “We’re not through yet.” Harry pulls at Zayn’s belt, gets the fly, untangles their legs.

Is Harry done with Louis? Is Zayn truly out? These questions, ever so quickly diminished in their brief encounter, haunted him nights afterwards, even when he laid next to Gigi, next to other men. 

 

**INT. CAR — AFTERNOON**

“Don’t you want to love, and be loved?”

“ _There was a boy_ ,” Harry drags out, teasing the first line of Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy”. “ _A very strange and enchanted boy…_ ” His vocals swoop upward and hammily, attempting levity. But his delivery is oddly composed. There’s an alarming precision. Zayn bites the inside of his lip, unsure of the sudden distance between them.

“Honestly? I’m better alone. I’d rather be lonely by myself than feeling lonely lying next to a lover.” Harry runs his hand through hair in agitation, attempting to shake off the stinging feeling building within him. “Ever since I finished with Louis, it’s just not been that easy for me to be romantic. I really wanted to believe that I would find someone to love, but you know, after getting screwed how many times, I’ve just given up and taken what comes into my life. So I’ve been coasting, not giving a shit about the men I’ve been with. Sure, there’s no real excitement or connection. But no one can hurt me.”

He turns away, and leans his head against the window. The air between them is charged, and all Zayn wants to do is reach out and hold Harry’s hand. To express, not in words, how he’d never do him like that. But Harry’s steely and removed, and Zayn doesn’t need to be sitting on an airplane in how many hours to feel like there’s an ocean between them. So they sit side by side in the backseat, each staring out their respective windows. After awhile, Zayn attempts to break the spell.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he says carefully. “I didn’t mean to —”

“It’s not even that,” Harry cuts in, intense and ready to spill over. “I was fine, you know? And then I read your damn book. And it really fucked me up! It’s as if I put all the romanticism I ever had into that one night, and I’ve ghosted on anyone since then when it got too close. Let’s face it: I’m a liability.”

“You don’t mean that.” Zayn reaches out to touch Harry’s arm, but pauses, unsure of how to proceed. He spent how many years so wrapped up in his own emotions about that night, meanwhile not realizing what Harry might have gone through. A rumble of thunder can be heard in the distance. 

“I’ve been heartbroken too many times, and recovered just as easily,” he says quietly. Harry takes a shaky breath, and rubs his fists into his eyes, attempting to calm himself. “I don’t even try anymore because I know it’s not going to work out anyway.”

“You can’t do that,” says Zayn. He feels Harry turn into himself, and he doesn’t want that to happen. Not after this afternoon, and the spark of something he hasn’t felt since ten years ago. “You can’t spent your entire life avoiding pain.”

“Zayn?” 

Harry gripes Zayn’s wrist, and impulsively presses his lips against the underside, before suddenly dropping it.

“Please don’t waste your time.”

Lightning cracks the air, and the splatter of rain begins to hit the windshield. 

Harry catches the driver’s attention in his rearview mirror. “ _Monsieur? Laissez moi au coin de la rue. La c’est parfait._ ” 

The car begins to slow down.

“No!” Zayn yells. “Please don’t stop the car. Keep going.” He turns back to Harry. “I just want you to know that I’m so glad I’m here with you right now, and you didn’t forget me. You don’t know how much that means to me.” Zayn’s hand reaches over to touch Harry’s knee. His thumb tentatively caresses, attempting to bring Harry back from all this. 

“Oh, fuck off Zayn. This isn’t like that Ethan Hawke movie. We had cell phones, email, Facebook. You knew how to find me! You could have reached out to me anytime. I didn’t have that luxury of choice.”

The car stops at the next set of lights. Harry jumps out of the passenger side and stalks off towards the Metro sign. Zayn thrusts a wad of Euros at the driver, wildly pointing to pull over and wait. 

The rain pours as Zayn chases. “Harry!”

Harry is ten paces ahead, but stops. They stand in front of each other, both wet and soaking in the rain. 

“Look,” Zayn tentatively begins. “I know there have been a lot of mistakes, which we both made. I apologize for my part. All that nonsense in the past? I don’t give a shit about that anymore.”

Harry messily rubs his eyes, his chest heaving. ”I never stopped thinking about you,” he said shakily.

“What if I —” he falters, the knot in his throat making it painful to speak. He can’t let his nerves get away from him, not now. “What if I wanted to give this a chance?” 

“Zayn, you’re leaving. You can’t always want what you want when you suddenly decide you want it. I won’t live in the past.”

“Let me tell you something,” Zayn slowly steps towards Harry, and pulls them underneath the awning of the fruit market they’re standing in front of. Suddenly, the world closes on them, and the rain fades into the background. They stand close. 

“This here, right now? At this very moment, is all that matters to me.” 

He wants this second chance so badly. The rush of memories and the what if’s and wondering if Zayn was always just going to be forever lost in this boy he fell hard for in his early twenties when his life was such a mess.

Harry looks like an idol that Zayn wants to protect and hold close. He takes a shaky breath, and glances back at Zayn with a tentative smile.

“How do we do this?”

Zayn lights up. 

“I don’t know.”

“I live here! And you’re in Toronto,” says Harry forlornly, wrapping his arms around Zayn's waist, resting his head on his shoulder.

“I don’t care,” Zayn says, and impulsively leans in to kiss Harry with all he has. Feeling intoxicated by the softness of his mouth, he starts to let go of the memories, the past ten years, and finally lives in this present moment. All they have the now, the unknown.

Harry pulls back slightly, his lips aflame, and Zayn's flushed cheeks cool ever slightly by the caress of the silver of his chunky rings. He looks dazed, and smiles radiantly. “Alright, so what’s the first step?”

"I don't know. But we'll figure it out. Together."


End file.
